In one way, this recognition means more for more me, partly because I’ve got the no. 1 slot this time around, but also because I’m more focused on talent and human capital management than I am on traditional HR.

But at the same time, talent management is such as overused and misused term, I think the recognition is in some ways less meaningful. It’s certainly the first of thee lists where I don’t actually recognise a lot of the other people who are included.

“We were all surprised by some of the results. As noted earlier, Talent Management is not the most clearly defined silo in HR. Bill Kutik defines it as a suite of software services. Wikipedia’s definition is the full lifecycle harvesting of human capital. Some people mean ‘succession planning’ (that’s roughly how Bersin and associates define it). While others (many of the people on the list) see it as a euphemism for Recruiting.”